Bring My Children Home

Rx Bandits have come out with a new album called "Mandala." This entire album makes me feel a cleansing relief of hope for music, and in some odd way life itself. I am under no delusion that this album will in fact save the world, but I am at peace when any of the 12 tracks are floating through the air and into my head. It is an assault on society, love, and moral questions of war and leadership, not just in the United States, but the ideas of it in general. Like all the other Rx Bandits albums since Progress the band has developed a self consciousness that few too people achieve in their lifetimes let alone as a collective group or band. Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living" and bands like Rx Bandits do what in my opinion all great art should do. It holds up a mirror to the society they are trying to reach and beg them to look and ask if they can love what they see. Should we love what we see? This band wants us to examine our lives, and find the standards of life, and love we need to survive. Examine what is truely important to us, and what dirves us to do what we all do. Is it love? All too often I don't think it is.
Another thing great art does is avoids giving answers. Art that gives answers to the questions it asks is propaganda, and it can be for either side. Despite past albums to seemingly provide answers to the questions they asked, "Mandala" wants you to think. The Rx Bandits have taken control of their musical endevours and are using them to give us something tangible. Something worth the thought and effort. This band reflects its own self examination. They create to recreate. They aren't the ska band they started out as, and they're not even the same band that created "... And The Battle Begun" a few years ago. You can hear in their musical experimentation that they are not content finding a formula and working within that space. Everything has been a progression and it has led to "Mandala." This album is fascinating and an achievement that I hope many will get the chance to experience. Find your way too it soon. Absorb it. Think about it.